three little rituals in June

Coming off of a whirlwind week and heading into a busy weekend!! Just a quckie today. Here are some additional favorite rituals if you're interested.

Weekly Trader Joes Salad Kits & Youtube. Though with summer scheduling my life is slowing down a bit, this ritual saved my mental health. Chris works a regular overnight shift at the fire department each week. I used to feel lonely on those weeknights, often burnt out from working all weekend and just struggling to do my own routines and make a nice dinner without someone else prompting it. Once I let go of being "productive" or cooking something nice on those nights, everything got better. Now, I grab a salad kit from Trader Joe's on the way home from work, and eat the whole thing on the couch with a glass of wine while watching Youtube. It's the best night of the week. 

Google Calendar & A Notebook. While my Google calendar is how I live and breathe, I've also been using a notebook bullet journal style for a lot of planning. I wrote out a monthly spread, the have a page for each week. On each weekly spread I block of a section to put the days of the week and any large, unusual events on those days to visualize it, then I write lists of what I need to get done for the week. I have four categories: Career, Self, Relationships, and Habits. For me, this is the perfect combo of my love for paper planning plus the necessity of being too busy to not have a digital calendar!

Being religious about nightly chores. I am not the best at doing chores in a timely manner. But, as everything has been so busy this spring I've gotten really good at making sure the kitchen is at least closed for the night. If I have more time and energy, I like to sweep, wipe the counters, do all of the dishes, and tidy things up. If I'm moving fast or am low energy, though, I just make sure the dishwasher is running and prep the coffee for the morning. Waking up to just that makes such a huge difference in the start of the day! I've even been starting to finish those chores up before we go out if I think it's going to be a late night. 

Summer Fridays are basically holidays SO A VERY HAPPY FRIDAY TO YOU!! <3

What I've Read 6 Months Into 2023

Popping in for a quick little list of what I've read so far in 2023! My reading goals for the year were, simply, to read actual books more. For the past few years, I've read approximately 20 books a year with the vast majority being audiobooks. While I love an audiobook, I wanted to reconnect with the enjoyment of laying on the couch and cracking open a real, paper book. I also wanted to tackle longer books and get back to reading fiction. I'm a self-help junkie, and while I always will love a book like that, I'm on a quest to reconnect with my ability to do things for pleasure and reading more fiction ties into that. My third goal (that I've been woefully lax about) was to third at least 12 books of poetry. Right now I'm at two (but two more than last year!). Here's the list:

Fifty Days of Solitude by Doris Grumbach. This was shelved in poetry at my library even though it isn't really poetry, more like very literary, wandering mini essays. I loved it though! It's the kind of good reading you can't rush and was perfect for winter. 

Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King. I listened to this short story collection on audio and loved it. After every single story, I was sad it was over only to immediately get into the next story. Definitely a Lily King fan!

The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness by Robert Waldinger. Another audio read I loved! One I'd recommend to anyone and am excited to return to in future years. 

The Electricity of Every Living Thing: One Woman's Walk with Asperger's by Katherine May. I loved Katherine May's Wintering and this first book of hers is also beautiful, especially as I navigate pursuing my ADHD diagnosis. 

Bargain Bin Rom-Com by Leena Norms. This is a proper poetry collection. I love Leena's Youtube channel and getting to read her writing in a different medium was so fun! Definitely love. 

Bad Vibes Only by Nora McInerny. A quick, fun read. Not my favorite of the year and honestly as an essay collection I think it could have dived a bit deeper, many things seemed surface level. But fun and worth a read!

Spare by Prince Harry. So weird to write the author name like that? Happy I read it, it was by far too long and I do have a lot of criticisms BUT this is a person's real story so like....I didn't read it for the literary value? I need to do a longer post about what I think but I loved Lenna's video, this podcast episode, as well as this essay by the ghostwriter to start. 

How To Keep House While Drowning by K.C. Davis. A great place to start and a valuable book! I'd recommend KC's podcast as well. 

Writer's and Lovers by Lily King. Lily King for the win! Her writing is just so immaculate and the characters just pull me right in. It reminded me a lot of Sue Miller's writing, so anyone who's into introspective, character-driven novels of with a throughline of women going through a life change? I can't get enough!

The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff. Favorite read of the year I think! The plot, characters, and pace of this book were so quick and engaging that I could not stop reading it. I read it on vacation over like four days and it was amazing. Laugh out loud funny, while also working with extremely hard-hitting topics like racism, classism, and domestic violence. I haven't stopped thinking about it and will be rushing to read whatever Shroff writes next. 

Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match by Sally Thorne. Cute, steamy, funny....not the best writing by any means and if it was any longer I think the dialogue would have made me unable to finish, but a cute vacation read if you want something brainless with a great sex scene. 

My current reads: I am still plugging along through Middlemarch, and listening to the literary disco Middlemarch from 2020 alongside it. I'm also in the middle of A Better Man (Chief Inspector Gamache) by Louise Penny, How To Love by Thich Nhat Hanh, and A Radical Guide For Women with ADHD by Sari Solden. Also technically in the middle of The Incredible Journey of Plants by Stefano Mancuso, though I haven't picked that up in a while. I'm also listening to Trespasses by Louise Kennedy.

Once I work my way through at least a few more of those, I'm looking forward to picking of The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell and Radically Content by Jamie Varon. What have you been reading?

are we still trying for this balance thing?

Tonight, I feel an odd mix of overwhelmed and content. I am excited and nervous for the coming busy workweek. I am proud of what I've accomplished as this work year wraps up, while also counting the hours until we're on a full summer schedule and my weekends truly open up. As the worlds top Chelsea Fagan fan, I know I've mentioned her Tik Tok on not being busy. Well--this is the follow up and I honestly love that one even more. 

At this point on the internet I feel like we understand that the quintessential "work-life balance" is not really an equation anyone has ever solved. Self-care lists are just that--more lists and to-do's and things to leave undone. It seldom feels like we have enough choices about our work lives, our circumstances, to be able to make the changes we need for life to feel more manageable. This spring when life was feeling overwhelming, the phrase I kept saying to myself was I need my life to be tenable. Tenable! Maintainable.

That is tonight's cosmic question into the void: how do we make our lives maintainable? I love working. While the go-go-go schedule of late nights and early mornings and weekends is a little much, I also know myself and know I wouldn't be happy at a more typical 9-5. I love variety in my days and weeks. I love the different seasons of my work. I love being both out of the house and in the house. I love having so much personal autonomy. I love that I am the one in charge. 

And: I hate that it feels like I'm the only one keeping things afloat. I often feel overwhelmed. I dislike driving as much as I feel like I have to and I wish that work was easier to turn off. It feels like I am putting out fires all day--and that's exhausting. I want to feel like I'm building. 

This coming week marks the last huge event of the season, and I'll be in Boston just about every day next week. After that, it's Saturdays off and once July hits, Sundays off! This summer I am planning to help myself reset. I want to make time to learn and invest in the future, not just cram my schedule so I get a larger short-time paycheck. I will be home a little earlier in the evenings. I am going to try to do summer Fridays and only work a half day. I want to do "low dopamine mornings" and try to really curb my scrolling habits. I am going to try, try, try, to really stay on task and intentional with work and then put it away when I'm done. 

To be clear, life is pretty amazing. I go on walks every day. I've read 8 books so far this year. I see friends every week, and am religious about deep cleaning the apartment once a week. We just got back from a vacation to Mexico--and the fact that this outpouring of overwhelm is happening after a week on a beach should be perspective giving, but alas, not quite. I just want to ask, how much happiness is appropriate? How much contentment is...realistic? 

But instead: I would love to ask the age-old question--how do people do it? What is everyone's secrets? Is there a way to clean your house, read, work, go to school, have friends, while not feeling overwhelmed? What is a normal level of overwhelm? Is this really just a reframe, or do I actually need to burn my life down and build something--softer?